With budgets set for 2025, marketers face a familiar challenge: limited resources and a growing skills gap. Faced with intense competition for specialized talent, the solution may lie in adopting a training culture. This will fill critical skills gaps and drive long-term success.
Why talent shortages pose a major threat to marketing success
Ed Gordon, author of “Winning the Global Talent Showdown,” observed:
“You can have all the latest technology you want, but if you don’t have the talent, your business is not sustainable. »
In the Randstad Enterprise Talent Trends Research 2024 report, marketing and creative leaders named their top two challenges as:
Increased competition for hard-to-find skills (34%). Growing shortage of specialized skills (32%).
The skills gap threatens the sustainability of businesses around the world. Data and analytics are the biggest gap in marketing departments, according to Marketing Week’s 2023 Career and Salary Survey. There are also gaps in soft skills such as communication and leadership. As marketing skills gaps widen, demand outstrips supply of qualified talent.
Dig Deeper: Why your marketing team needs training, not just technology, in the age of AI
Cultivating the Right Mindset: Cost Versus Value
Here’s the good news. Skills organizations are:
79% more likely to provide a positive work experience for their staff. 63% are more likely to obtain results than those not benefiting from a skills-based approach.
The bad news? Inefficiencies have far-reaching consequences when organizations need to replace talent. The cost of replacing an employee can be up to twice their annual salary. The average empty position remains open for more than two months. On the other hand, training someone is expensive about $5,000.
A skills-driven workforce requires alignment across the entire organization: leadership, managers and employees. Everyone must understand that retraining and training can lead to success. Fostering a culture that develops skills is a better long-term solution than trying to recruit from a small number of qualified people.
Many organizations are role-based, focusing on jobs, titles and functional responsibilities, with hiring managers prioritizing qualifications and years of experience. In contrast, a skills-based culture emphasizes an individual’s set of skills, abilities, and motivations. It looks at how these can be applied to different roles or projects to achieve organizational goals. By adopting a skills-based strategy, companies focus on potential rather than experience and technical skills.
The benefits of this culture include:
Increased resilience. Greater competitiveness in the market. Better talent retention. Improved profitability and productivity. Corporate culture preserved.
However, overcoming the barriers to role-based mentality is often the biggest challenge.
Develop a skills and development-based workforce
Only 33% of organizations have internal mobility programs. This explains why only 20% of employees feel confident making an internal move. This is a major barrier to staff development and a growth mindset.
Moving from a role-based approach to a competency-based approach requires significant effort and investment. Developing a common language around skills, implementing tools like learning management systems, and providing the necessary resources won’t happen overnight. However, there are steps you can take right now:
Prioritize on-the-job training
Allow time in annual planning for skills development. Specify the planned time to spend on training and development. This means defining a percentage or total time that each level (manager, associate, etc.) and role type (people manager, individual contributor, etc.) is expected to spend on training and development. Use this logic to plan your service capacity.
Start small with mentoring programs. Provide unique training opportunities based on the specific skills required. Focus on a few skills at a time to increase change management success. Consider starting with human-machine interaction that everyone can use (for example, a quick engineering training course).
Explore cost-effective personalized learning options. For example, LinkedIn Learning showed positive career results for 70% of users.
Encourage a culture of continuous improvement
Create the skills narrative as an investment, not an expense. Create organizational context around the importance of skills at all levels.
Monitor time spent on development effortsfollow planned expectations and socialize progress and victories.
Provide employees with practical opportunities to apply and develop what they have learned. Identify projects or expose them to cross-functional teams working on similar skills. Consider asking them to lead sessions on the training or skills they have developed.
Measure success. Develop KPIs that show the value new skills bring to the business. Metrics such as employee engagement, turnover rates, skills acquired and promotion rates will help plan resources for next year.
Dig Deeper: Develop your AI generative marketing skills: training and development
Upskilling: The Key to Closing Marketing Skills Gaps
The reality is that you will rarely get the numbers you ask for. Even if it does, recruiting might not provide the quick fix you expect. To achieve our goals, we must focus on developing the skills of our existing talents. The sooner we take steps to support this effort, the sooner we will succeed.
It’s crucial that marketers are involved in defining the skills you’ll need and assessing those you already have. Work closely with HR to ensure Marketing’s specific talent needs are understood and factored into retention and recruitment strategies.
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